The present invention relates to an operation unit for electronic equipment such as a facsimile apparatus, and more particularly to an operation unit using a touch panel.
Recently, a liquid crystal touch panel has been used in office equipment such as a copying machine and facsimile apparatus. In the equipment, predetermined various keys are displayed on the touch panel, and various operations are performed when the corresponding key is pressed.
However, the operation unit using this touch panel has the following problems in the operability. (1) A key which is invalid due to the condition of a facsimile apparatus cannot be confirmed on the screen. (2) An item being set by an operator cannot be confirmed on the screen. (3) Items already set by the operator cannot be confirmed on the screen.
Furthermore, since the display area of a liquid crystal screen generally has a limitation in that keys of all operations cannot be displayed on a single screen, a menu is used so that the screen display method is switched when a key is pressed.
However, in this driven menu, the combination of buttons displayed on the screen is previously determined, and this combination could not be set by a user freely. More particularly, since frequently used buttons are different depending on the user, it is ideal to arrange those buttons on the same screen. However, the conventional touch panel could not offer such a function to the user. Accordingly, the user had to switch the screen by pressing the keys to set the frequently used function, thus the operation was troublesome.